Ah yes, the green pastures. Green never was my favorite color!
With four screws and two pins in my foot I was going nowhere fast! On the four month anniversary of the break they would perform surgery again to remove the four screws. Then the rehabilitation began (in more than one way)!
My next thought was "Great. Okay, God, your Word said Get up, for God has given you victory. I got up and fell down and broke my foot! So where are you in this? Exactly how am I supposed to minister in missions with a broken foot? It's not like they have handicap-friendly facilities in Ukraine where you called me to work. So now what? I obeyed your Word, and look where I am!
Being made to lie down when there's so much work to be done is not an easy place to be in. Somehow even then I knew that God had allowed me to be in that place for a purpose. I just wish I wasn't so hard headed that God had to "knock me down" to get my attention. Sometimes I feel like I must be forever cast in that TV series "NCIS." You know, the one where the boss (character name Gibbs) is always popping his subordinates on the back of the head when they say somethiung stupid or do something they should know better than to do. Maybe as you read this you will learn your lesson (if you haven't already), and it won't take such drastic measures from God to get your attention. If I can offer some advice right here - don't be stubborn like me. Don't close your ears to what God is speaking to your heart. After awhile it really hurts to get popped on the back of the head by the "boss."
Another scripture jumped off the page at me. Actually, this one jumped off and did somersaults! Take a look at Psalm 23:2. "He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters." It took me a while (I can be rather dense sometimes), but I realized God made me lie down - in the pastures. I'm not so sure they were green, but I was definitely laying down. And the waters ... oh yeah, the waters were definitely still - like dead still - like nothing was happening.
This story didn't start with the "Get up" word though. It started about three months prior when God just brought it to my remembrance one day that seven is His number of completion, and the battle my family had been fighting for the past several years would soon end. He dropped it in my spirit that eight is the number of new beginnings, and 2008 would be the beginning of a new thing. In fact He revealed things to me that I have yet to share with anyone because they are just too amazing to utter. I did write some of them down, and I even shared some of them with my husband, George and then with my parents. The day all of this flooded my brain (and my heart) ... well, I had church all by myself in my kitchen! It was awesome!
Oh, okay, so you're reading this and thinking how weird I am to have had "church" all by myself in my kitchen. Let me ask you something. If you were all by yourself in your kitchen and your phone rang and Ed McMahon was on the other end of the phone and told you that you had just won the Readers Digest Sweepstakes - you know like $5,000 a week for the rest of your life. I ask you how would you react? Would you be calm and cool and say, "Oh, thank you. That's good news." Really!? Give me a break! You would be just like those people they show on TV - jumping all around, shaking your head, pinching yourself to confirm you were awake. Then you would get on the phone or maybe in the car and find someone to share the news with, right?? Well!
After my church service in the kitchen - there were confirmations. We had not one but several visiting ministers at our church who confirmed His word for me. They called me out of the congregation and told me things like, "God says He is doing a new thing in you. Wait for it." They urged me to "hold on" because God was going to take what the enemy meant for harm and turn it around and use it for my good. I had "words" and confirmations from everywhere. Yet ... nothing NOTHING was happening. I didn't see new things happening - except for new battles. The more we stand in faith, the harder it gets to stand. So I was standing on one leg! Most of the time I wasn't even standing - I was sitting in the wheelchair! I just wanted to scream, "WHERE ARE YOU, GOD? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
I prayed, and I cried and I begged God "just tell me what it is I'm supposed to be learning through all of this. I promise I'll write it down and memorize it and put it into practice. Just please stop this merry-go-round so I can get off." It seemed the more I begged for it to stop - the faster the merry go round spun.
With four screws and two pins in my foot I was going nowhere fast! On the four month anniversary of the break they would perform surgery again to remove the four screws. Then the rehabilitation began (in more than one way)!
My next thought was "Great. Okay, God, your Word said Get up, for God has given you victory. I got up and fell down and broke my foot! So where are you in this? Exactly how am I supposed to minister in missions with a broken foot? It's not like they have handicap-friendly facilities in Ukraine where you called me to work. So now what? I obeyed your Word, and look where I am!
Being made to lie down when there's so much work to be done is not an easy place to be in. Somehow even then I knew that God had allowed me to be in that place for a purpose. I just wish I wasn't so hard headed that God had to "knock me down" to get my attention. Sometimes I feel like I must be forever cast in that TV series "NCIS." You know, the one where the boss (character name Gibbs) is always popping his subordinates on the back of the head when they say somethiung stupid or do something they should know better than to do. Maybe as you read this you will learn your lesson (if you haven't already), and it won't take such drastic measures from God to get your attention. If I can offer some advice right here - don't be stubborn like me. Don't close your ears to what God is speaking to your heart. After awhile it really hurts to get popped on the back of the head by the "boss."
Another scripture jumped off the page at me. Actually, this one jumped off and did somersaults! Take a look at Psalm 23:2. "He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters." It took me a while (I can be rather dense sometimes), but I realized God made me lie down - in the pastures. I'm not so sure they were green, but I was definitely laying down. And the waters ... oh yeah, the waters were definitely still - like dead still - like nothing was happening.
This story didn't start with the "Get up" word though. It started about three months prior when God just brought it to my remembrance one day that seven is His number of completion, and the battle my family had been fighting for the past several years would soon end. He dropped it in my spirit that eight is the number of new beginnings, and 2008 would be the beginning of a new thing. In fact He revealed things to me that I have yet to share with anyone because they are just too amazing to utter. I did write some of them down, and I even shared some of them with my husband, George and then with my parents. The day all of this flooded my brain (and my heart) ... well, I had church all by myself in my kitchen! It was awesome!
Oh, okay, so you're reading this and thinking how weird I am to have had "church" all by myself in my kitchen. Let me ask you something. If you were all by yourself in your kitchen and your phone rang and Ed McMahon was on the other end of the phone and told you that you had just won the Readers Digest Sweepstakes - you know like $5,000 a week for the rest of your life. I ask you how would you react? Would you be calm and cool and say, "Oh, thank you. That's good news." Really!? Give me a break! You would be just like those people they show on TV - jumping all around, shaking your head, pinching yourself to confirm you were awake. Then you would get on the phone or maybe in the car and find someone to share the news with, right?? Well!
After my church service in the kitchen - there were confirmations. We had not one but several visiting ministers at our church who confirmed His word for me. They called me out of the congregation and told me things like, "God says He is doing a new thing in you. Wait for it." They urged me to "hold on" because God was going to take what the enemy meant for harm and turn it around and use it for my good. I had "words" and confirmations from everywhere. Yet ... nothing NOTHING was happening. I didn't see new things happening - except for new battles. The more we stand in faith, the harder it gets to stand. So I was standing on one leg! Most of the time I wasn't even standing - I was sitting in the wheelchair! I just wanted to scream, "WHERE ARE YOU, GOD? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
I prayed, and I cried and I begged God "just tell me what it is I'm supposed to be learning through all of this. I promise I'll write it down and memorize it and put it into practice. Just please stop this merry-go-round so I can get off." It seemed the more I begged for it to stop - the faster the merry go round spun.
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